Now and Forever (14 page)

Tucker turned to his wife. “What do you say, Shannon?”

She’d asked for time to think about it, but she was just trying to annoy them and they probably knew it. “Fine. If I believe my sheep are safe, you can rent access to my river and the meadow.”

She stood and showed Gage to the door, swinging it open, making it very easy for the man to leave.

“I’m obliged.” Gage slapped his Stetson on his head and was gone fast, as if he didn’t want to give them time to change their minds.

“There’s only one good thing I can think of about allowing Gage Coulter to use my water and land.” Shannon crossed her arms and glared at the man as he galloped away.

“The money?” Tucker asked.

“No. But the money is nice.”

“Helping out a neighbor?”

Shannon snorted in a way that could only be described as unladylike, and since she was wearing britches, she didn’t see how that came as any surprise.

“It’s kind to his suffering animals?”

“It is that, but that isn’t the main reason.”

Tucker came up behind her, let his crutches drop to the floor, and wrapped his arms around her in an embrace. She slapped at him, but he didn’t let go. In fact, he drew her back tight against him. She didn’t hit him harder and told
herself it was because she didn’t want to knock the poor injured man over, even as she nestled closer.

“Then what?” He spoke into her ear, and his warm breath sent shivers, pleasant shivers, down her neck and arms and backbone.

She folded her arms over the top of his and looked back over her shoulder and grinned at him. “It’s knowing that it is going to make my pa so mad he might never speak to me again.”

Tucker kissed her on the side of the neck. “Would it be okay to tell him it was my idea?”

Shannon laughed and turned in her husband’s arms to kiss him properly.

T
ucker had crutched his way out to the fence Coulter’s men had built over the last week. He got along with one crutch these days and could make pretty good time.

Coulter would be bringing his cattle over soon to start grazing on the lush grass on Shannon’s homestead.

It was nearing sunset. Aaron and Nev had come over, as they did most days to help round up these stupid sheep and lock them in the barn so the wolves wouldn’t eat them overnight.

The sheep were in their own little corral, and there was plenty of grazing and water. The wolves started to run in a pack this time of year and howled at night, so you’d think the sheep would know their being inside was a good thing. But they must have as much wool inside their heads as outside, because the critters always fought getting locked up.

Shannon was inside having coffee with Kylie and Sunrise, leaving the nightly roundup to the men, which meant
it would be a rodeo because the sheep liked her and hated everybody else.

Sunrise had moved her teepee from Aaron’s house to Tucker’s. She lived in the woods, out of sight. She had a knack for being around when she was needed and vanishing when she wasn’t, and since Shannon wouldn’t cook Tucker any food with meat in it, Tucker needed Sunrise a lot.

As for the sheep, as much as Shannon loved them, she seemed to enjoy leaving them to do the nightly roundup, something Tucker took as a good sign—that she was leaving men’s work to the men. Except he knew good and well the only reason she’d abandon her sheep was a perverse desire to make everyone’s life harder. She was still cranky about Coulter’s fence and the thought of his cattle coming over, even though she’d agreed to it.

Coulter was grouchy, too. He was getting the grass and water he wanted, but what he was really after was to own it all, not rent. Since everyone was about equally mad at him, Tucker figured that meant he’d handled this problem with the wisdom of Solomon. Only trouble was, he didn’t give a hoot how Gage Coulter felt, and he’d really been hoping Shannon would start thinking wifely thoughts about him by now.

Solomon had himself seven hundred wives. How in the world did he manage, even smart as he was supposed to be? If he’d been really smart, surely he’d have married a lot less often. One wife was more than Tucker was up to handling.

In fact, the one was so irritating that Tucker needed to take his irritation out on someone, so he didn’t bother
being polite—not even to the man carrying an ornery sheep while Tucker leaned on the fence and coddled his stupid broken leg. “You don’t need to stick around, Masterson. I know you want to head for New York.”

“Virginia, actually.”

“All that land back east seems like New York to me.” Tucker folded his arms on the top rail of Coulter’s fence and glared at the ram that’d just kicked Nev Bassett in the gut. “Why does a man need thousands of cows? He can live on the meat of a deer for weeks, and these mountains are full of deer.”

“We’ll wait until the cast comes off.” Aaron seemed to know Tucker’s griping had nothing to do with cows. “Kylie’s in no hurry to leave her family.”

Tucker wanted to fight. Stupid as it was, he wished Masterson would stop being so blasted reasonable and patient. “Some animals will gnaw their foot off to get out of a trap, and if this cast doesn’t come off my leg soon, I’m gonna hack it off myself.”

Aaron chuckled. “The cast or your foot?”

“It’s almost six weeks now, Tucker.” Nev sounded patient and reasonable. And Tucker considered the man to be the next thing to insane. “I might be able to cut it off in two weeks, but it probably oughta stay on four because you’re not going to be careful when you get the plaster off.”

“If you leave this thing on me one day longer than two weeks, I’ll rip it off myself and beat you to death with the cast.” Tucker doubted Solomon would’ve said that any better.

And he doubted Solomon would have lain next to one
of his wives night after night, feeling her warm beside him, feeling full of spit and vinegar and doing nothing.

It probably helped to be king.

Tucker wished he had any idea in the world how to go about making her be more friendly. And barring that, he wished he could burn off some of this energy by going for a long hike in the woods, hunting down an elk, packing it back home, skinning it, tanning the hide, smoking the meat, storing the food for the winter, and making himself a new outfit of sturdy elk hide instead of these strange flimsy cotton things he was wearing.

He reckoned Dr. Nev wouldn’t count that as being careful.

“I didn’t feed your mare, Tucker.” Aaron came out of the barn. “She wants to kill anyone who gets within ten feet of her. You’ll have to feed her yourself. I did manage to swing the stall shut and lock it.”

“She can unlock it and she feeds herself.”

“There’s a latch on the stall and another on the oats bin.”

Tucker shrugged. “I know. Why do you think we put that new hasp on the outside of the barn? Nothing much stops my grulla.”

“Strange horse.”

“Grew is the best horse a man ever had.” Truth was, Tucker felt fine. And with Shannon watching him like a hawk, quick to nag him if he tried to do one lick of work, he’d been careful of his leg and it didn’t hurt a bit anymore.

Having the boundless energy steaming and boiling inside him, and being unable to use it because of this confounded cast and his eagle-eyed wife—all of that was bad
enough. But mixed together with the way Shannon felt held close in his arms, Tucker was about to lose his mind.

Maybe if he told her how restless he felt. If he made it sound like behaving toward him in a wifely manner would be helping him, would speed up his healing? She liked to think of herself as the doctoring type.

Of course if he did it wrong, he might end up with a plaster cast getting slammed over his head. He remembered well enough the words she’d whispered to him right before they’d taken their vows.

“We may speak vows now that are forever, but
you’ll not have the rights of a husband until we know each other much better than we do now.”

Oh, he remembered every single word. He remembered agreeing to it, too. But how well exactly did they have to know each other? And who got to decide when they finally were well enough acquainted for their vows to switch over to being real? Tucker worked that question over in his mind about as many times a day as Solomon had wives.

Nev emerged from the barn, the last of the sheep locked away. Saved from the wolves for one more night. And what exactly were they saving them for anyway? To Tucker’s way of thinking, those sheep should have been finding their way onto his plate. Which reminded him of one more thing.

“Did you know Shannon only believes in eating vegetables?”

“What?” Nev and Aaron both turned at the same instant and stared at him, their eyes wide with horror.

“Well, she says milk and eggs are okay, except we have neither chickens nor a milk cow. So if it was up to her, we’d
be living on vegetables. Lucky for me, Ma keeps bringing me food or I’d have gotten so skinny the cast would have just fallen right off my leg by now.”

“Vegetables? What vegetables?” Nev looked around, and his eyes landed on the cursed plot of land Shannon took such joy in cultivating.

“Beet and potato season right now. We eat whatever’s growing. As much of it as she can harvest, less whatever she puts in the root cellar so we can eat it all winter, too.”

“I like potatoes.” Nev scratched his chin. “I don’t recall ever having a beet.”

“They’re mighty red.” Tucker glared at the garden and tried to mentally talk his wife around to deciding she knew him well enough. Or at least convince her that she oughta feed him some mutton. “I’m about to start using beets for target practice.”

Dusk had settled, and it was time for his friends to head for home, which left him to face another night of restlessness with his unfriendly wife.

Then Coulter rode into the yard at a fast clip. As much as Tucker found the man a bigger nuisance than his cast, he was a welcome distraction.

“I’ve been looking for you, Masterson. I’ve got trouble. I’d heard you were quitting the country. Glad to see you’re still here.”

“What trouble?”

“Homesteaders have been burned out. Three that I’ve found. The places are abandoned and the fires weren’t no accidents.”

Aaron narrowed his eyes. “All on land you want?”

Coulter swung down off his shining brown stallion and took long strides right up to Aaron. Coulter was shorter, as everyone was shorter than Aaron, but he still was a big man, and years of brutally hard work settling a harsh, rugged land had made him a man no one wanted to tangle with if they didn’t have to.

“If you accuse me of burning out a family, you better be ready to fight,” Coulter said.

Aaron Masterson didn’t back up. He didn’t back up for anyone. “I asked you a question. You haven’t answered it.”

“I had nothing to do with what happened. I rode to town to talk to Stewbold, but he wasn’t around, so I decided I’d talk to you. I stopped at your place first. The fact is, I’d as soon talk to you as him. I haven’t even met him yet.”

“He’s not wise to western ways,” Tucker said, not wanting to turn men against the new land agent, but remembering his own suspicions and trusting his instincts.

Coulter gave Tucker a hard look and nodded. “I rode over to talk to these folks, see what it would take to get ’em to change to another homestead, only to find them gone. The thing you’re accusing me of is being done by someone else.”

“Were they killed?” Aaron pulled his gloves out from where he’d tucked them behind his belt buckle.

“Nope, at least I didn’t find any bodies, nor any sign of shooting. Just the fires. I didn’t see any animals that died in the fire at one place, but I didn’t climb around in all the burned-out barns. I wouldn’t even say for sure the fire’d been set if it hadn’t happened three times.”

“If someone’s driven off three homesteaders, he may
have driven off more.” Aaron tugged his gloves on. “I hadn’t heard of any fires before I handed off the job.”

“The fires were recent. One was still smoldering; I’d say it’s less than two days old.”

“I’ll go with you in the morning to talk to Stewbold and see if he’s heard from these folks. It’s too late to do much about it tonight, but we need to warn all the homesteaders.” Aaron looked toward the house. “We need to warn Bailey. We’ll ride there on our way home.”

“That’s miles out of the way,” Tucker said. “I’ll ride over.”

“Not with that leg, you won’t,” Nev said.

“Where exactly is Bailey’s homestead?” Coulter asked.

The rest of them made a point of ignoring him.

“I’ll get Kylie. Nev, we’ll ride home past Bailey’s. You stay off that leg, Tucker. I want you healed so I can get on with moving home.” Aaron strode toward the house.

“I’ll get the horses saddled up.” Nev headed for the barn.

Tucker watched them both go. Leaving him with a very curious Gage Coulter.

“I’ve been trapped on this land for weeks. I can still ride, even with a broken leg.” Tucker grabbed his crutch.

“Oh no.” Coulter caught Tucker by the shoulder, and Tucker had a sudden desire to use his crutch to club Coulter across the stomach.

Coulter seemed to realize it, and the sidewinder stepped out of crutch-whacking range. “You know, Tucker, if someone is burning out homesteaders, a smart man like you, who’s a homesteader, oughta stay close and protect his wife.”

Solomon would probably order his soldiers to stay to the homestead and protect his wives while he gadded about the countryside. Tucker never got to have any fun. “You can’t keep me here forever. You’re gonna need a tracker when you get to those homesteads.”

Coulter fought it, yet he couldn’t quite stop a smile. “I’ll ask Sunrise for help.”

Then Coulter went for his horse. He made good time getting to it, too. In fact, it could almost be said that the man was running.

Aaron came out of the house with Kylie and Sunrise.

Sunrise nodded to Tucker. “I left stew. I think it best I stay with Bailey until we are sure about these fires.”

Tucker nodded.

Aaron must have convinced them it was urgent, because they were saddled up and on the trail in no time.

Tucker turned to the house, scowling.

Shannon stood at the door, a worried look on her face. It was a wonder she didn’t go along too and leave him home alone. Except she probably stayed to take care of him, as if he were a small boy.

Gritting his teeth, he wondered if Shannon wanted him to help make tea or bake cookies. Or stew some beets.

Maybe if he asked real nice, she’d stitch him up his own apron.

He really should have taken just one good swing at Coulter. The only reason not to was because Coulter probably wouldn’t have fought back because of Tucker’s broken leg.

Winning a fight out of pity would have been about the last straw.

As he got close he realized Shannon stood in the door, holding a pot that smelled like stew. His stomach growled, and it helped Tucker to move faster toward the house. The look of disgust on Shannon’s face even made it fun.

He hobbled along on his crutch toward the house, looking hard at his pretty, dark-haired wife with those sparking blue eyes.

They didn’t have any company for once. Not even Sunrise.

His leg was feeling mighty good.

He was all stirred up with energy and real tired of being treated like an invalid.

Right then and there he decided his wife knew him as good as she needed to. He planned to spend the night convincing her of just that.